Road to Rio | Road to Rio: Heartbreak for hosts means we're heading to the final - for a price
Dream of heading to a World Cup final comes true - after a lengthy search and multiple ATM trips
Having watched Brazil's humiliating capitulation to Germany in a remote log cabin in the Chapada Diamantina National Park, it's hard to gauge how the result will change the atmosphere there, but after landing in Rio there's a distinct sense the party's over.
Gone are the smiling Budweiser girls giving out free cans of beer at the airport, while the ubiquitous green and yellow bunting we've seen on streets and town squares is conspicuous by its absence. Even the weather seems to be in a funk, the rain drizzling down petulantly from the gloomy sky.
Brazil flags still fly from many windows but it's hard to tell whether this is a defiant show of support or mere absent-mindedness.
There's a moment of silence as we exhale sighs of relief and at last allow ourselves to believe: we are going to the World Cup final
Ipanema has a sunny, happy-go-lucky place in our collective imagination, but when we arrive it seems more than bossa nova, dominated by umbrellas and raincoats instead of bikinis and golden bodies.
Given our most pressing objective is to track down final tickets, this is probably no bad thing, and we send out messages on every medium short of semaphore and smoke signals. Our persistence finally pays off when we hear from Pete, a former teammate from Wan Chai Spartans.
Despite the fact he now lives in Ulan Bator, he is in Rio and has a Brazilian friend who is happy to cash in his tickets now the Selecao have been sent packing.
Four seats together, at significantly less than we've seen elsewhere, seems almost too good to be true, so we arrange to meet the following day.
Brazilian ATMs have a maximum withdrawal limit of 1,000 reais (HK$3,500) a day, which leaves us considerably short of our magic number.